Recipe for More
by amandajbruce
Summary: In which there is the making of a cake... and maybe a little bit more.


**A/N: And this would be the follow up to Food for Thought. Hopefully it meets with all of your expectations. I feel like they just keep getting higher and higher. Not that it's a bad thing. It keeps me on my toes. Um... it's kind of long. Sorry about that. The story kind of got away from me.**

"Oliver, when you said you wanted to make your mom a cake, I thought we were talking a basic cake. You know, flour, sugar, eggs. Mix it all together and you're good. This… this is more than I thought we would have to do."

Lilly fingered the recipe card in her hand as she spoke. She was following a step behind Oliver down one aisle of the grocery store, watching him as he put the ingredients in to the basket he was carrying.

"Did I mention I want to double it?" Oliver asked her casually, making sure he was out of her reach so she wouldn't hit him.

"What?" Lilly asked flatly.

"Yeah, my dad invited my aunt and her kids and my mom's parents for dinner, and I want to make sure there's leftovers." He paused to analyze a row of jars of maraschino cherries.

"And you waited until now to tell me?" Lilly retorted as she walked up to his side to examine the rows of glass containers of round red objects with him.

"Is that going to be a problem?" Oliver turned to look at her, smiling a little before he elbowed her gently in the side.

Lilly gave an exaggerated sigh and blocked his elbow with her own before she returned his smile. "I guess if you promise to save me a piece of cake, I can deal with it."

"Thanks, Lils."

They stood there for a minute, just smiling at one another, forgetting that they were in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store.

"Excuse me, dear," came a voice from behind the two of them. "If I could just…"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Lilly exclaimed, jumping to get out of the way of a stooped elderly woman in a moss green dress.

Oliver stifled a laugh when he caught Lilly's eye over the woman's head. She giggled a little as the woman grabbed a small jar of cherries and shuffled away.

"Jeez, Lils. Way to block the shelf," he teased her when the woman was out of earshot.

"Oh, shut up. You were in the way too." Lilly smacked him in the side with the back of her hand and grabbed a small jar of cherries from in front of them. "This is enough, right? It says you only need a few."

"Yeah, I guess."

"I mean, really, it's just a garnish to make the top of the cake look pretty. You don't really need the cherries," Lilly added, still holding the jar in her hand.

"Lilly, it's a cherry chocolate cake. I can't not put cherries on it!" Oliver sounded shocked at the very thought.

She rolled her eyes at his antics and dropped the jar in the basket in his hands as they walked toward the cocoa powder.

"So, how exactly do you plan on doubling this?" Lilly asked him.

"Um, well, you see, normally when you double something, you just multiply the ingredients by two," Oliver told her sarcastically.

"You know, I'm starting to think you like getting smacked around," Lilly joked as she stepped on the back of his sneaker to let him know she did not appreciate the sarcasm.

He seemed to anticipate the attack on his shoe though, and instead of tripping as he walked forward, Oliver stopped short and she almost ran into him. "Only by you," he said seriously over his shoulder.

Lilly smiled a little when she pushed him to get him to start walking again, and decided to let the sarcasm go...this time

"Okay, but really, the recipe says to use two of the round cake pans, but then you cut the two pieces in half so you have four smaller layers of cake. You want to have an eight layer cake instead?"

"Mmm… eight layers would be awesome… but no. I was thinking that we don't have to cut them in half. Just use the four layers, but you know, full size from the baking pans." Oliver nodded his head as he spoke and grabbed a box of cocoa powder.

"That's going to be a really big cake."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

The cocoa powder had been the last necessity for the cake Lilly had promised to help make, so the two of them made their way to the front of the store. They found themselves in line behind the same stooped woman in the moss green dress they had been in the way of earlier. She and Oliver looked at each other and tried hard not to laugh.

To distract herself, Lilly let her eyes wander over the tabloids that lined the register. "Hannah Montana's new boy toy?" read one, and Lilly shook her head in disbelief. She was pretty sure the blurry guy next to Hannah in the photo was one of her back up dancers. Lilly was also pretty sure that particular dancer was not interested in girls. In fact, she was almost positive that he had a thing for Mike Stanley, the third, which always amused her, because Oliver had no idea.

While Lilly read the latest Hannah headlines, Oliver was busy watching her. Her hair was up in a messy bun and she kept brushing the loose strands out of her eyes. He was pretty sure she hadn't brushed her hair this morning when he called to wake her up and inform her that they were going to the grocery store. She hadn't thought he was serious and when he got to her house, she was wearing an old pair of denim shorts and a tank top she had tie-dyed with Sarah last year. She looked like she was ready for a day of cleaning the house, not making a trip out with Oliver. He had ignored her protests of wanting to put on real clothes and make up, and dragged her out to his dad's car. Who needed make up to go to the grocery store anyway?

Lilly reached up and attempted to smooth her hair back again, and Oliver couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed her hand and lowered it between them.

"Would you stop messing with your hair? It doesn't look bad."

She froze and looked at him in disbelief. She would have been preoccupied with him holding on to her hand, but she was too focused on what he just said to her.

"I'm sorry, did Oliver Oken just tell me to stop messing with my hair?" Oliver rolled his eyes in response. "Oliver Oken? King of the hair flip? Really?"

"You think I'm King? That's kind of cool," Oliver told her, still holding on to her hand.

"No, I just think you're obsessed."

"But you already called me the king. You can't take it back now."

"Obsession with hair flipping is not healthy," Lilly went on, ignoring him.

"I only flip my hair when it gets in my eyes," Oliver protested.

"Maybe you need to get a little trim then," Lilly informed him, reaching up with her other hand to flick a few strands out of his face.

"A trim? But the ladies love the longer look."

Lilly shook her head in exasperation. Secretly, she did like the longer and shaggy style he had going on right now, but that was only because it gave her an excuse to push his hair out of the way. It kind of drove her crazy that half the time she was talking to him, she couldn't see his eyes. Not seeing his eyes meant not knowing what he was thinking.

"You should listen to your girlfriend, son," came the voice from the green dress in front of them. "You don't want people to think you're one of those freewheeling hippies. My son was one. It got him into all kinds of trouble." The little old woman nodded her head emphatically and the pearls around her neck shook with each nod. Lilly just giggled as the woman collected her bag and left.

"See," Lilly said to him, poking him in the side as soon as the woman was gone. "You don't want people to think you're a hippie," she joked, glossing over the fact that the woman had just referred to her as his girlfriend.

Oliver was trying not to laugh as he finally let go of her hand and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. "Do you think I look like a hippie?" he asked the guy who was ringing up their purchases.

"No way, man. Miss Nettles is just crazy. Usually when she comes in, she tells me I need to get rid of my nose ring because that's how the aliens are going to track me down." He loaded the last of their items in the two bags and took Oliver's twenty dollar bill.

"Huh, see Oliver, you need a nose ring to call them, not tin foil outfits," Lilly said to him seriously.

"That's what I've been doing wrong," Oliver agreed as he took his change.

The guy behind the register looked at both of them as though they might have been a little crazy too.

"It's a long story," Oliver explained, suddenly realizing that only he and Lilly knew what they were talking about.

"Sure, dude. It's cool."

Lilly laughed as she picked up one of the bags and followed Oliver out of the doors.

"What time is everyone supposed to be at your house?" Lilly asked him when they reached his car, carefully placing her bag in the backseat before she climbed in front.

"Uh… I think around six."

"Perfect. That's when my dad's supposed to pick up me and my brother for the weekend, so you'll be good to go before he gets here."

"I didn't know you were going to your dad's."

"Yep. Second weekend of the month."

"Oh. Right."

Lilly looked at Oliver as he backed the car out of the parking space. He was concentrating awfully hard on not hitting anyone considering there was no one behind the car.

"What?" he asked her, feeling her eyes on him.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I was going to see if you wanted to do the whole birthday thing with my mom." Oliver mumbled the words, keeping his eyes glued to the road now.

"Really?" Lilly tried to keep the happy squeak out of her voice, and she only just succeeded. There was still a wide grin on her face though. She had been to almost all of Oliver's birthday festivities, and his little brother's, and their parents had a lot of joint holiday parties for Christmas over the years, but his parent's birthdays were usually family and soon-to-be family only.

"Yeah, I mean, since, you're helping bake the cake and all." Oliver shrugged and kept staring straight ahead even though they were at a red light, his fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel.

"Well… maybe I can convince my dad to let me off the hook this weekend …I know it's a four day weekend and all and he wanted to take advantage of it…" Lilly hesitated, her left hand playing with some loose threads on the seat belt.

"I can drive you to his place tomorrow," Oliver offered, shooting a glance at her out of the corner of his eye.

"You sure your dad'll let you take his car again, and on the highway with me, plus you'd have to drive back by yourself?" Lilly raised her eyebrows. Mr. Oken was big on car safety. It was usually like pulling teeth for Oliver to borrow the car.

"I'll talk him into it," Oliver told her firmly.

"Then it's a plan." She nodded her head in satisfaction and bit her bottom lip to keep from smiling too widely. She tapped her foot impatiently on the floor mat, feeling like she could probably skip all the way back to her house right now, even if that would look a little strange. Lilly turned to look out the window as they pulled off through the intersection, so she missed the just as equally satisfied smile on Oliver's face.

***

About fifteen minutes later, Lilly had brushed her hair and put it back in a braid, not wanting to risk any strands falling into Mrs. Oken's cake. She was in the process of getting all of the ingredients lined up on the counter and was promising her mother that she would make sure the kitchen was absolutely spotless when Heather Truscott returned home from an afternoon meeting.

"What about Mark?" Lilly asked as her mother picked up her purse from the kitchen counter. She was, of course, referring to her little brother who was currently parked on the living room couch flipping through channels.

"Make sure he doesn't break anything. And don't let him use the phone. He keeps prank calling Miss Thomas up the street. He heard the 'is your refrigerator running' joke the other day and he keeps trying to use it on her. Fortunately, Miss Thomas thinks its funny, but I don't want him to start trying to call anyone else," Heather told her daughter, waving goodbye, her car keys dangling from her finger tips.

Lilly chuckled to herself as her mother left and Oliver walked in through the kitchen door, a couple of small round baking pans in hand.

"What's so funny?"

"You're gonna need to teach Mark some new jokes," Lilly told him, looking through one of the cabinets to find all of the measuring cups.

"What are you talking about?" Oliver grabbed a can of some sort of baking spray and used it to "grease" the four pans they were going to be using.

"He's been calling Miss Thomas asking her if her refrigerator's running," she explained, setting the cups on the counter, then turning to find the whisk and the measuring spoons in a drawer near the sink.

"Just Miss Thomas though, right?' Oliver asked quickly.

"Yeah." Lilly giggled a little, then added, "I never should have asked you to cover for me when I was supposed to be baby-sitting him."

"What? Mark's cool. Plus, Miss Thomas loves to get random phone calls. I'll teach him some math jokes next. She likes those."

"You should be so proud that you have a sense of humor that's got the approval of an eighty-five year old woman," Lilly teased him.

"She's not eighty-five yet. Her birthday's in July," Oliver informed her, finding a glass mixing bowl and adding that to the supplies on the counter.

"Oh, my mistake." Lilly shook her head, walking up behind him to check the baking pans once he finished spraying them. "Oliver?"

"Yeah?"

"I sent you home to get two nine inch pans. Those are a lot smaller."

They stood side by side, surveying the pans on the top of the stove.

"My dad said my mom was on her way home for her lunch break. I just grabbed the first ones I found," Oliver explained.

"I guess we can just put the smaller ones on the top?" Lilly asked him, turning to look at him for a response.

Oliver just nodded his head when their eyes met, not entirely remembering how to speak. She was having that effect on him a lot lately.

"Lilly, I'm hungry," whined a voice from the entrance to the kitchen.

Mark was standing in the door, his arms crossed, rocking back on his heels.

"Mom didn't make lunch for you before she left?" Lilly asked him, glancing at the clock on the microwave. It was only a few minutes after noon.

"When does mom ever make lunch?" Mark asked, using the same sarcastic tone often employed by his older sister as he climbed carefully onto a stool that had been slid underneath the island in the center of the kitchen.

"How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" Lilly asked him, moving to the pantry.

"No more jelly," Mark told her.

"Why didn't you tell me? I could've got some when Oliver and I went to the store."

"I didn't know I was supposed to."

Mark shrugged his shoulders and Lilly stood there with her hands on her hips. Oliver felt like he was getting a preview of what Lilly would be like in another decade or so when she had a kid. He watched as she suggested a few more lunchtime items and Mark refused all of them. Oliver was kind of impressed. When he and Lilly had conversations like this, she lost patience after about option three, but with Mark, she just kept throwing out ideas. The only visible sign that she was annoyed was the tightening of the grip of her fingers on her hips.

"I could order a pizza."

"But we had pizza for dinner on Monday."

Oliver saw the tips of Lilly's fingers turning white. Yep, she was going to lose it soon. He turned, opening the fridge and shuffled a few items around.

"How about I make you a hotdog?" Oliver asked Mark.

"With ketchup and mustard?" Mark asked, his eyes lighting up.

"You put ketchup on your hotdog?" Oliver asked him skeptically.

"Mom does."

"A true hotdog expert, like myself," Oliver gestured to his chest with the pack of hotdogs in his hand, "knows that the only way to go is mustard."

"Unless there's relish," Lilly cut in, measuring out the right amount of flour in the glass bowl, relieved that Oliver was the one dealing with her brother's lunch.

"True. Relish changes everything," Oliver agreed easily.

"There's a pot in…" Lilly started.

"I know where everything is," Oliver told her, not wanting her to have to stop her work on the cake, and he quickly set about getting to work making a few hotdogs while Lilly mixed the rest of the dry ingredients.

The entire time the hotdog was on to boil, Mark asked Oliver just about any hotdog related question he could. Lilly forgot just how well Mark behaved whenever Oliver was around. Of course, Oliver always got along well with kids younger than them. Lilly used to joke that it was because he was still really an eight-year-old, but she had always been a little jealous that Oliver was able to keep her brother in line when Mark usually drove her crazy. Oliver answered every question without a second thought, his patience never seeming to wear out.

"But what about cheese? Can't you put cheese on a hot dog?" Mark asked, leaning forward on the counter, watching as Oliver cracked a few eggs into another glass bowl for Lilly.

"Sure, but cheese only goes really well when you've got chili too," Oliver explained.

Lilly smiled, adding sugar and vanilla to the eggs, giving it a quick whisk before Oliver handed her the butter to add to it. She was beginning to like having Oliver in the kitchen. He anticipated every move, quick to have the next ingredient ready before she even had the chance to ask for it. Lilly wondered if there was anything to his dad's theory that compatible people cooked well together. She pushed the bowl back in his direction, turning to wash her hands while her brother grilled Oliver on the best forms of chili.

"No way. If you make it right, you don't need hot sauce," Oliver told Mark, using a fork now instead of the whisk to mix in the butter. Since Heather Truscott did not bake, there was no electric mixer to be found. Oliver was internally debating whether or not to throw his half of the batter in the blender.

"Mark really likes hot sauce… on just about anything," Lilly explained, grabbing bread and mustard, creating a make shift hotdog "bun" and placing it on a plate on the part of the counter in front of her little brother, then fished a hotdog from the pot on the stove as she turned the burner off.

"Really? You ever tried cayenne pepper on chocolate ice cream?" Oliver asked, still swirling the fork through the mixture in the bowl.

"What's cayenne pepper?"

"Don't give him any more ideas," Lilly muttered, rolling her eyes.

"What? It's pretty good," Oliver said, eying her as she grabbed a banana for her brother, setting it on the plate next to his newly made hotdog. To Mark, he mock whispered, "I'll let you try it when Lilly's not around."

Mark giggled, taking his food and heading into the living room.

"Don't get any mustard on the couch," Lilly called after him. "Mom'll freak!"

She leaned against the refrigerator, watching Oliver trying to smooth out the wet ingredients for the cake. Oliver was starting to look a little frustrated now, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed. Lilly swallowed a giggle, amazed that mixing a cake could frustrate him more than her little brother's almost endless line of hotdog questions.

"Give me that," she commanded, extending a hand for the bowl. With a resigned sigh, Oliver did as he was told. It barely took her any time at all to smooth out the lumps Oliver had created with the butter. She expertly added the new mixture to the dry ingredients with one hand, stirring it together with the other.

"Man, Lils, when did you get so good at all this?" Oliver asked her, content with just watching her work.

"I don't know. It's fun." Lilly shrugged while she poured the batter into the pans, not really knowing what to say.

When Oliver slid the pans into the oven, Lilly set the timer, and they quickly got to work on the chocolate dipped cherries and cherry frosting.

With Mark safely in the living room, Lilly found that the two of them could easily work in silence, shifting from one side of the counter to another, exchanging glances now and then. It was a little weird that all of the awkwardness between them of the last few weeks seemed to melt away. She still felt her stomach flip when he gave her one of his half smiles, and she had to catch her breath every time his arm brushed hers, but all in all, the time spent in the kitchen was comfortable.

"I don't think we're actually going to need all of these," Lilly told Oliver later as she dropped the last of a dozen cherries on to a sheet of wax paper, "but I guess you'll have extra, just in case."

Each of the cherries had an in tact stem and the bottom halves were now covered in baker's chocolate. Lilly surveyed Oliver's work with the frosting. He was attempting to whip the ingredients together, but it still looked a little thin.

"What did you do to it?" she asked him.

"I just did what the directions said," Oliver told her, continuing to try and stir the mixture.

"Are you sure?" Her expression was doubtful, eyebrows raised.

Oliver took a step closer to her, tilting the small bowl he was using toward her to let her see what it looked like. It was basically pink goop, and definitely too thin. It slid from one side of the bowl to the other when he tilted the bowl.

"Maybe the shortening wasn't any good?" Oliver wondered aloud, a confused look on his face.

Lilly giggled at that look. She couldn't help it. She seemed to have turned into one of those giggling school girls lately that she always found so annoying. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, it was only around Oliver.

"Come on, it's not that funny," he protested, but the corners of his mouth were turning up as well.

Lilly started to take a step closer to him, but something zoomed past her legs, right between Oliver's, causing the bowl of frosting to fly out of his hands and up into the air. It bounced off of Oliver's head before landing on the counter, and as Lilly jumped to avoid the flying confection, she knocked over the bag of flour.

"Thor!" Mark yelled as he came running into the room after the small dog that had just wreaked havoc on the kitchen, "Give me back the remote!"

Mark cornered the dog by the back door, bent at the waist as he tried to wrestle the object away from him. Thor was now covered in flour and Mark had just left footprints though a trail of it.

Lilly sighed. She should have known. It was only a matter of time before the kitchen turned into a disaster zone. Oh, well. As long as she was able to fix it before her mom got home. She wasn't supposed to be done with her meeting for at least another hour.

"Mark," Lilly began, and then waited as the remote was yanked away from the dog by her little brother, "could you do me a favor?"

He groaned before asking what it was.

"Can you take Thor out back and turn the hose on him? We need to get all the flour off and he has to be dry before mom gets home."

"Fine," Mark grumbled, grabbing the dog by the collar and leading him though the back door, the remote laying forgotten on the floor.

Lilly then turned to look at Oliver. The laughter bubbled up from the pit of her stomach and she couldn't stop it. Oliver looked ridiculous.

"You think this is funny?" he asked her, trying to keep a serious expression on his face. Even he had to be aware that pink frosting all over his hair was not the best look for him.

"It's a little bit funny," Lilly told him, emphasizing with her thumb and forefinger just how little. She dropped her hand though and giggled again when a line of pink frosting began dripping down his forehead.

Oliver nodded his head as she continued to laugh and picked up the spoon he had been using to mix up the frosting, flinging what was left on it in Lilly's direction. A pink clump landed on her neck.

"Oliver!"

He chuckled at the high pitch her voice took on.

"I thought you said it was a little bit funny," he mocked, taking a step closer to her.

"Oh, it's on," Lilly informed him, picking up a stray maraschino cherry from the counter and lobbing it in his direction. How she managed to get it down the front of his tee shirt, she wasn't sure, but it made her laugh all over again, until the front of her shirt was covered in flour.

Ingredients flew, and Lilly was pretty sure that the majority of what she threw at him landed on the floor because she was too busy ducking her head to make sure he didn't get anything in her face. And then, Oliver's sneaker slid on a little bit of the liquid from the jar of cherries that she may have knocked over, and he fell forward, right into her.

"Okay, I think we should call a truce," Oliver said, his voice muffled because his face was in her shoulder.

"Ow," Lilly muttered. "I forgot how hard this floor is."

He brought his head up awkwardly, asking "you okay?"

She looked at him for a second, took a breath, and let her head fall back onto the tile, sighing. "Yeah, I'm… good." She sighed again, biting down on her bottom lip before she could bring herself to look up at him.

Oliver shifted his weight to his hands, prepared to get himself to his feet, but then Lilly did something he didn't expect. She reached up to his forehead, swiping a little bit of the frosting from it with the tip of her index finger, and tasted it, her tongue tentatively reaching out to the pink goo. And Oliver froze. His arms just locked and he couldn't move. He had never thought Lilly tasting frosting could be so… well, hot.

"Not bad," she mumbled, her cheeks pink, apparently realizing what she had just done.

She hadn't been thinking. It was just that he was there, and there was frosting on him, and… great. Now he was going to think she was crazy or something. Except when she allowed herself to meet his eyes again, he was definitely not looking at her as though she was insane. It was more like… well she wasn't entirely sure what that look meant. It was a cross between the look he had when the swimsuit issue of that sports magazine came out and the look he had when he could get caramel apples at the fair. She wasn't entirely sure how to interpret that, and she squirmed a little, propping herself up on her elbows, a bit uncomfortable, before realizing that she was basically pinned under him.

"Lils, I wanted to tell you," Oliver started softly, ducking his head a bit closer to hers, but he paused to clear his throat. His eyes bored into hers and his mouth went completely dry. He wasn't sure he was going to be able to get out what he wanted to say with her looking at him like that. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were pink, and he could tell that she was breathing a little faster than normal. He didn't care that she had streaks of flour on her face or cocoa powder in her hair. She looked amazing.

"What?" Lilly whispered, her heart rate speeding up. She hoped he couldn't hear it. She didn't want him to get distracted asking her if she was having a heart attack or something. Not now. Not when she thought he might actually say what she'd wanted him to say since before he broke up with Joanie.

"I just…" Oliver started to explain.

"What the hell happened in here?"

Oliver's mouth clamped shut and Lilly leaned her head back as far as she could to peak around the kitchen island, really hoping that she had imagined that voice. Her mom was not supposed to be back yet. It was, however, most definitely the form of Heather Truscott framed in the doorway to the kitchen. Lilly resisted the urge to scream at her mother to leave, and took the hand Oliver offered to help her up from the floor after he stood, not looking Heather in the eye.

"Um… hi, mom."

"Don't hi mom me. What did you do to my kitchen?"

"There was a minor mishap with the dog and some frosting," Lilly tried.

"A minor mishap?" Heather echoed faintly. She looked at her daughter and Oliver in disbelief, and Lilly may have been seeing things, but it looked like there was a twitch at the corner of her mouth, almost like she was trying not to smile. "Where's your brother?"

"I sent him out back to hose off Thor. He had flour all over him." Lilly looked at a spot on the wall above her mother's head as she spoke, afraid that if she looked her in the eye, her mother would see that even if Thor was covered in flour, the rest of the mess was clearly not the dog's fault.

"Uh, huh." Heather paused, looking back and forth between her daughter and the boy who lived next door, debating whether she should point out the obvious flushed faces and shallow breathing. She was going to have to find out just what was going on between her daughter and her best friend at some point, but she figured now was not the time.

The timer to let them know that the smaller of the cake layers were ready to be removed from the oven went off, and Oliver jumped.

"Well, you two worry about the cake. I'll go get the mop," Heather said, her eyes still narrowed in suspicion.

As soon as she left the room, Lilly breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that Oliver would still say whatever it was that he had needed to say, but evidently the moment had passed. He was now completely focused on making sure his mom had the best birthday cake ever. Lilly decided to let it go. She had already been waiting for so long, another weekend of waiting couldn't hurt, right?


End file.
